Kapsberger:
I pastori di Bettelemme
Natale
Viva etá felice
Gl´Angeli intorno al Presepio

Baldano:
Paso e mezo, Gagliarda

Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (1580-1651) was one of the most innovative and original composers in early seventeenth-century Rome, and a virtuoso on the lute and chitarrone. In 1630 Kapsperger published his “Dialogo posto in musica” in Rome, with the title I Pastori di Bettelemme nella nascita di N. S. Giesu Christo (The Shepherds of Bethlehem at the birth of Our Saviour Jesus Christ). With this, he applied himself to a genre which, in the first decades of the seventeenth century, enjoyed an extraordinarily high popularity in Rome, and at the same time may be regarded as a forerunner of the oratorio: the sacred dialogue madrigal. Kapsperger sets the poetic text of Giulio Rospigliosi, the most distinguished poet in Rome, in a varied sequence of recitative and several strong choral settings. The layout of the recitative is wholly dictated by the content and structure of the language, and reveals Kapsperger as a master of monody. The choruses, with up to six voices, Kapsperger sets homophonically throughout. It is highly likely that the first performance of the “Shepherds of Bethlehem” took place within the framework of a magnificent banquet in one of the Papal palaces after Vespers on the 24th December. The express mention of the Pope in the libretto makes it probable that Urban VII himself was present at the performance.